LK's Biodiesel Blog

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Today, all of Ms. Rioux's students met up together at 10:50a.m. infront of the school. The workmen and few students replaced the gasoline with the fuel that we made. After all of the fuel was poured into the bus, the bus driver got in. All the students were very nerveous and hoped that it would work. The bus driver turned his key. Then, "VROOMM!" The engine turned on!!! We all cheered. Everyone was so happy and the students took pictures with Ms. Rioux. Then, at that very moment, we had a lock-down. We had to go in the building so we couldn't see the bus actually move. The students went into Ms. Rioux's classroom and waited for the lock-down to end. Once the announcement said it ended, all of the students were allowed to have ice cream! Now, in 6th period, Ms. Rioux got an email from Mr. Ham (The one who presented the project) about the bus. The email said that the bus moved from Johns Creek to Alpharetta with no problem at all! The project was a success!!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Today, we continued what we were doing yesterday. We took our bottles and flipped them upside down on top of a bucket. Then, we unscrewed the lids and got out all the glycerine and animal fat. Once we got all the useless things out of the bottle, few students helped pour the usuable oil into beakers. Ater that, we washed all our bottles with water and left our bottles open to let the water evaporate. Finally, we took off our aprons, goggles, and gloves. We worked on our lab report and looked up physical property tests for the rest of the class period.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Today was a repeat from few days ago. We took our bottles and poured exactly 1L of oil into each bottle. The jars that once held methanol were cleaned. 12 grams of sodium hydroxide were measured and placed on petri dishes. Methanol was once again poured into the jars that were just cleaned. We poured the sodium hydroxide into the jars. Everyone shook them until they dissolved completely. This made methoxide. Then, the methoxide was poured into each of the bottles with oil in them. After that, we had to flip the bottle upside down 8 times. Finally, we placed our bottles upside down on a beaker. We are making more usable oil in class. I think we are close. We can see if we have enough oil to move a bus. Some physical property tests are testing boiling point, appearance, etc. Yesterday, we used the classroom laptops to check if we're done with blogging.

Monday, May 16, 2011

On Thursday, we tried to remove the glycerine from all the oil in the bottles. We took our upside down bottles and placed a bucket under them. The cap was opened slowly so we didn't lose all the oil. Once it was opened, lumps of glycerine came out. After all the glycerine all came out, there was still animal fat. We had to take out the animal fat too. After that was done, we closed the bottle and placed it upright on a flat table.
A cataylist is a substance that speeds up a process of chemical reaction. Our cataylist was sodium hydroxide.

On Friday, Ms. Rioux took the most clear bottles and carefully poured the oil into beakers. Then, we had to rinse out our bottles with water. Finally, the clean oil in the bakers were poured into bottles using a funnel.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Today, my classmates and I finished mixing the biodiesel. We copied a procedure we saw from a video. (If you want to see the video, click on this link: http://monkeysee.com/play/11686-how-to-make-biodiesel-at-home )To mix the biodiesel, we used 12 grams sodium hydroxide, 250mL methanol, and 1L used cooking oil for each bottle. We got a lot done today and worked efficiently.

The whole class was divided into 3 groups. First group poured exactly 1L of oil into each bottle. Second group measured 12 grams of sodium hydroxide. The third group handled methanol. Once the oil was poured in every bottle, everyone got a jar of methanol. We each added sodium hydroxide into the jar and mixed them together. The jar soon turned warm from the chemical reaction. We had to shake the jar until all the sodium hydroxide dissolved. This process created methoxide. After that, the methoxide was poured into each bottle. The bottle was flipped upside down 8 times and placed upside down in its own beaker. I learned that sodium hydroxide and methanol can be very deadly and that we must be careful at all times. I thought about how the liquid in the bottle would look tomorrow and if we succesfully accomplished the task.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

The above picture is a diagram of a labeled diesel engine. Diesel engines are different than normal gasoline engines. Once you start the car, the diesel engine’s fuel is sprayed into the combustion chambers with fuel injector nozzles. This takes place when there is just the perfect amount of air each chamber that are under a great amount of pressure. When this takes place, it will be hot enough to ignite the fuel spontaneously. I got this information from this link: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-do-diesel-engines-work.html

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Today was the 2nd day of filtering oil. Today went much smoother than the first day. First, we filtered the oil that wasn’t filtered yesterday. We still used the same method and used cheese cloth. This time, we did not use a funnel. Instead, we poured the oil right through the cheese cloth using beakers. Once we were done filtering, we rinsed out the buckets and the cheese cloths that we used with a hose outside of the building. Inside, we cleaned the beakers that we used and scrubbed the tables clean using soap. After that, the class ended.